Regina King (born January 15, 1971, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American actress and director who was known for her depth and versatility, earning acclaim for both comedic and dramatic roles.
King’s father was an electrician and her mother a special education teacher; they divorced when she was a child. While still young, King took acting classes, for which she exhibited a pronounced aptitude. At age 14 she was cast as the teenage daughter of a main character in the sitcom 227 (1985–90). She then appeared in the movies Boyz n the Hood (1991), Poetic Justice (1993), and Higher Learning (1995), all directed by John Singleton, and followed with the comedy Friday (1995). King’s performance as the wife of a football player (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) in the popular movie Jerry Maguire (1996) brought her additional notice and led to more prominent roles in How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Enemy of the State (both 1998), among others.
After starring with Chris Rock in Down to Earth, King was cast in the short-lived sitcom Leap of Faith (2002). She returned to movies, appearing in the comedies Legally Blonde 2 (2003) and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) and winning praise for her role as a backup singer and lover of Ray Charles in the biopic Ray (2004). King played a character in season six (2007) of the TV series 24 before being cast in the police drama Southland (2009–13). She also had recurring roles in Shameless in 2014 and in The Leftovers in 2015 and 2017. In the anthology series American Crime (2015–17) she portrayed a different character in each story arc, and for her work on the show she earned two Emmy Awards (2015 and 2016). She won a third Emmy for her performance as a grieving mother in the miniseries Seven Seconds (2018), about an African American boy accidentally run over by a white policeman who tries to cover up the incident.
King was breathtaking and masterful in the role of Tish’s mother in Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), adapted from the 1974 novel by James Baldwin. For her performance King earned the Academy Award for best supporting actress. In 2019 she starred in the TV miniseries Watchmen, for which she won a fourth Emmy Award. Her credits from 2021 include the films Flag Day and The Harder They Fall. The latter was a revenge western in which she portrayed a ruthless outlaw, and her costars included Idris Elba and Jonathan Majors.
King also worked behind the camera from 2013, when she directed the TV movie Let the Church Say Amen. She helmed episodes of numerous TV series over the next few years, and she made her critically praised feature film debut as a director with One Night in Miami (2020).